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The woeful economic statistic du jour was February's consumer spending data. It grew by just 0.1%. Ben Tracy illustrated retail troubles on CBS' Hitting Home series with a visit to a heavily-discounted Los Angeles boutique called My Favorite Place. "Americans are now actually saving more than they spend--good for their bottom line, bad for the economy." On ABC, Chris Bury (embargoed link) reported on the trucking industry crisis that Nancy Cordes covered Wednesday for CBS: the rising price of diesel has hiked annual fuel costs for the freight industry from $112bn to $135bn in just one year.
On NBC, anchor Brian Williams asked economist Steve Liesman from CNBC, his network's sibling financial news cable channel, to explain the credit crunch. The Federal Reserve Board has assets of $800bn in USTreasury notes, Liesman explained, and has already committed between $300bn and $400bn to banks in an attempt to restore liquidity in order to allow them to start lending again. "Nobody knows where this is going. People do not even understand what the problem is," Liesman stated. "There are guys taking their college textbooks off the shelf to go back and remind themselves about stuff that they learned about in school, because it always worked. They never really had to know about." Quipped Williams the anchor: "I do not know if I am comforted by that or not."
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